Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home eBook

“Every last one, little girl, and a dozen more
if you like. So fly to the east and fly to the
west and then invite the very one whom you love best,”
answered Captain Boynton, pinching Peggy’s velvety
cheek.

“Oh, there are so many we love best,”
she laughed, “that we’d never dare ask
them all, would we, Polly?”

“Let’s ask all who are here tonight,”
was Polly’s diplomatic answer, “then no
one can feel hurt.”

“Hoopla!” rose from the other end of the
porch where Durand, Ralph, and three of the other
boys from the ships were sitting around a big bamboo
table drinking lemonade.

And so the party was then and there arranged for New
London’s big day.

CHAPTER XV

REGATTA DAY

Peggy and Polly scrambled out of bed the morning of
the Yale-Harvard crew race, to find all the world
sparkling and cool with a stiff breeze from the Sound.
It was a wonderful day and already the sight presented
in the bay was enough to thrill the dullest soul.
During the five days in which “Navy Bungalow,”
as it had been promptly named by the young people,
had been occupied by the congenial party from Annapolis,
old friendships had strengthened and new ones ripened,
and a happier gathering of people beneath one roof
it would have been hard to find. Perfect freedom
was accorded every one, and the boys who had just
graduated soon found their places with the older officers,
for the transition, once the diploma is won, is a
swift one. As passed midshipmen and “sure
enough” junior officers, they had an established
position impossible during their student days in the
Academy.

The boys on the practice cruise also felt a greater
degree of liberty, and the fact that they were the
proteges of Commander Harold and Captain Stewart gave
them an entree everywhere.

To Durand the experience was not a new one, for he
had the faculty of winning an entree almost anywhere,
but to Ralph and his roommate, Jean Paul Nicholas,
as bright, merry a chap as ever looked frankly into
one’s face with a pair of the clearest, snappiest
blue eyes ever seen, the world was an entirely new
one and fairly overflowing with delightful experiences.
Then, too, they were now youngsters instead of plebes,
and this fact alone would have been almost enough
to fill their cups with joy. The other boys who
came from the ships had been second-classmen during
the past year, but were now in all the glory of first-classmen,
and doing their best to make good during the cruise
in order to carry off some of the stripes waiting
to be bestowed upon the efficient ones during the
coming October.

In the two weeks spent with Mrs. Harold at Annapolis,
Mrs. Howland had learned to love Peggy Stewart very
dearly and Mrs. Harold said: